QuickBooks Tips & Resources – Part 2

For those QuickBooks users out there who follow the blog, last week we took a look at some tips from the QuickBooks Specialists blog by Ruth Perryman, a QuickBooks guru if there ever was one. Today, I’d like to look at a few that I’ve enjoyed from QuickBooks and Your Business, by Shannon Tucker.

A guide to selecting the best edition of QuickBooks for your business:

A: At SherWare, we have many tools and questions we ask to help get your started with the best edition and software package to meet your oil and gas accounting needs. As evidenced by our sales, our QuickBooks integrated edition is one of our most popular, which makes Tucker’s post outlining the various editions of QuickBooks so helpful.

I can walk you through picking the best oil and gas accounting package we have, but I don’t have the level of expertise with QuickBooks to direct you to the best package to integrate with our program. Here’s an outlined version of Tucker’s original post.

Like our software packages, all QuickBooks editions will handle your basic accounting needs. What varies between editions is the special features and nuances that can make or break how smoothly your accounting operations flow.

For small businesses:

QuickBooks Online Plus

– Program entirely online

– Can handle up to 5 users at once plus the accountant

– Handles accounting records from multiple locations in real-time

QuickBooks Pro

– Can handle up to 3 users at the same time working on a network

– Best selection for small businesses to handle general accounting functions

– Can add optional modules to create your own package

For small to medium businesses:

QuickBooks Premier

– Can handle up to 5 users at the same time working on a network

– Can purchase industry-specific editions (although there isn’t one for the oil and gas industry)

– Allows you to do business planning and forecasting

For medium businesses:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

– Can handle up to 30 users at one time working on a network

– Is designed to handle higher transaction volumes and database sizes

The costs for each of these products obviously vary depending on the number of users and increase the larger the product you need. Check Intuit’s website for current pricing information.

How do I limit the access my employees have in QuickBooks?

A: Since QuickBooks houses your most intimate details about your business’ financials, it makes sense that you don’t want everyone who works in your office to have the ability to access and edit any information in the program.

You can control which features each employee can access and whether they have the ability to edit information on that screen or only read it by going to Company > Set Up Users and Passwords > Set Up Users.

Once you’ve either selected an existing user or create a new one, you’ll be able to choose what parts of the software they can access by walking through QuickBooks’ wizard allowing you to go through each function step-by-step and selecting options.

By taking the time to set up each user properly with the amount of freedom within the QuickBooks program at the beginning, you’ll give yourself peace of mind and protect your business from fraud and error by knowing precisely who can access your financials.

The areas available for setting security controls include:

– Sales and Accounts Receivables

– Purchases and Accounts Payables

– Checking and Credit Cards

– Inventory

– Time Tracking

– Payroll and Employees

– Journal Entries and Online Banking

– Financial Reporting

– Changing or Deleting Transactions

Should you choose to overwrite when restoring a backup?

It happens to the best of us. A computer crashes, you get a new computer or need to correct data errors your QuickBooks file is currently experiencing. When you go to restore your QuickBooks data, many people choose to keep the restored file name the same, prompting the fear-inducing question: Do you want to overwrite the existing file?

Initially, your first reaction may be to simply re-name the file so you don’t have to worry about accidentally overwriting the wrong file. But upon further thinking, it’s possible that without a consistent name for your QuickBooks file, other users may accidentally begin using the old version of the software if stored on a network – creating a whole host of other problems that may not be easily fixed.

Shannon offers a ingenious solution that takes a few minutes more to ensure that you have the most accurate data in your QuickBooks company and to prevent users in the office using all different versions of the same file.

Before beginning to restore your backup of the QuickBooks company, he suggests creating a folder within the main folder where you store your QuickBooks data and naming it Old Copies. With all users out of QuickBooks, open My Computer and browse until you get to the folder or network drive where your QuickBooks data is stored. Click and drag your company data file to the Old Copies folder you’ve created (It’s a file with a .qbw extension at the end), and rename it with your company’s name and today’s date.

By moving it out of the original data folder and renaming it with today’s date, you no longer have to worry about users accidentally grabbing the wrong file since it’s labeled as a dated version. You also can now go into QuickBooks and restore a backup without having to worry about it asking if you want to overwrite the file. With the old data out of the folder, it won’t try to rewrite it – giving you a clean slate to start with and the most recent backup clearly dated if you need to go back in time.

What other tips do you have that help you get through your work? Are there any other QuickBooks Tip blogs you follow as well?